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Consumer group targets genetically modified food

November 22
Business Day (South Africa)

DURBAN Consumers International, the world consumer watchdog body, has decided to advocate accessible health care and strengthen its resolve against patents and genetically modified food.

About 400 delegates at the group's 16th world congress in Durban last week called on governments and international agencies to prohibit the use of patents on life forms, impose a moratorium on the cultivation and marketing of genetically modified foods and develop policies that guarantee universal access to health care.

"All consumers have the right to sufficient and safe food. In protecting this right, governments and international agencies should prohibit the use of patents on life forms which impede access for farmers and consumers and increase the dependency of developing economies," said the body's new president, Louise Sylvan.

While the organization recognizes that the use of new food technologies may provide benefits, "concerns of environmental, social and economic (effect) remain".

"There should be a moratorium on the cultivation and marketing of new genetically modified foods until social and safety assessments are undertaken, and international agencies should desist from any attempts to intimidate governments which resist or prohibit such products on the basis of their laws and evaluations of risk and benefit," said Sylvan.

Consumers International supported the World Health Organization's strategic document entitled Health for All, which advocates the development of effective primary health care policies that guarantee access to health care for all.

Yussuf Saloojee, executive director of the National Council Against Smoking, pointed to an about-turn by the tobacco industry that saw it admit that smoking causes cancer.

"It is a case of bend with the wind or be broken.

"By positioning themselves as reasonable before government and the public, they hope to get into the boat and steer it away from stricter health and consumer laws," he said.

He also traced the evolution of other tactics by the industry, including "creating doubt without actually denying medical evidence linking smoking and cancer, philanthropy to buy friends and social responsibility, and using trade agreements, bribery and lobbying to force entry into closed markets".

In her closing address to the congress, trade and industry deputy minister Lindiwe Hendricks argued for greater consumer protection.

Endorsing Consumer International's estimate that 800-million worldwide people suffer from hunger, Hendricks said: "Our recent survey finds that one out of two people in rural SA do not have food to consume in a day."

Other studies, she said, had also raised worrying findings. "In SA, 61% of disposable income is used in the financing of debt. In addition to that, on average 99% of disposable income is used on consumption, leaving only 1% to be saved."

Language is also an impediment to sound consumer relations. She described as "disturbing" the fact that SA's two major trading languages are English and Afrikaans, while most consumers speak Nguni languages.

Hendricks said the congress had strengthened government's "determination to crack (down on) unfair business practices that adversely (affect) consumers". She said the state's consumer protection policy was in line with the resolutions adopted at the congress.

"Government has made some progress on issues of consumer policy, sustainable consumption, food security and food safety, public utilities, consumer education, information technology and media, foreign trade and others," said Hendricks.

The comprehensive restructuring of the national consumer affairs office would be influenced by the deliberations of the delegates. It is aimed at making the office more effective, efficient and relevant to the clientele it serves.

"We will be considering the issue of consumer protection, institutional and legal reform," she said.

Emphasising the importance of consultation, Hendricks said: "I am thrilled by the suggestion of this congress that consumer institutions must be involved in decision making.

"We are opening our arms and will go all out to get the affected institutions to tell us their views on these matters. In fact, experience has shown that policy decisions made without the involvement of the main affected parties may be improper or outright wrong."

Golden rice in a grenade-proof greenhouse

November 21
New York Times

Zurich - In a quiet village on the outskirts of Zurich, a genetically engineered strain of rice that its creator says could save millions of children's lives is locked up in a grenade-proof greenhouse as if it were the Frankenstein monster that some critics contend it is. Unlike any other rice on earth, this so-called golden rice produces beta carotene in its seeds, thanks to genetic instructions that scientists added to the rice from a daffodil, pea, bacterium and virus.

Beta carotene is an important source of vitamin A, which is crucial for healthy vision and resistance to disease. The body breaks beta carotene molecules into two vitamin A molecules, also known as retinol. People get beta carotene from fresh vegetables, like carrots, and get vitamin A directly from milk, butter, cheese, liver and cod liver oil.

But the World Health Organization estimates that 124 million children do not get enough vitamin A. Most of these children live in parts of the world where rice is not only the main staple but is often the only food available during the dry season, and infants are often weaned on rice gruel alone. Vitamin A deficiency causes about half a million children to go blind every year and makes many more vulnerable to diseases that cause diarrhea. One million to two million children die each year for lack of vitamin A.

Like a latter-day Johnny Appleseed, Dr. Ingo Potrykus, the German inventor of golden rice, would like to send his seeds to poor people around the world at no charge. "I would like to send a year ago," he said, holding out a handful of seeds stored in a locked refrigerator at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. "There are 3,500 children dying every day. I think we should not delay one day."

But golden rice has remained under lock and key since it was created more than a year ago. Meanwhile, Dr. Potrykus has struggled to free it from a complicated web of more than 70 patents and legal agreements covering items as diverse as DNA sequences and the techniques he and his colleagues used to insert new genes in the rice. He is also racing against an effort to pass legislation that could prohibit the export of genetically modified organisms from Switzerland.

Dr. Potrykus hopes to be able to send out the seeds before the end of this year under an agreement he worked out with Zeneca Agrichemicals, which has patents on some of the crucial genetic instructions used to make the rice.

The deal was brokered by Greenovation, a small German company that specializes in licensing academic discoveries in biotechnology. Greenovation licensed golden rice from Dr. Potrykus and Dr. Peter Beyer of the University of Freiburg in Germany, who collaborated on the invention.

Greenovation then licensed golden rice to Zeneca Agrichemicals, which last week merged with the agricultural divisions of Novartis to form a new company called Syngenta, now the largest agricultural biotechnology company in the world.

The company plans to market golden rice in developed countries like the United States as an enriched crop containing antioxidants, which are believed to reduce the risk of cancer, heart disease and macular degeneration, an eye disease that leads to blindness.

In return, Zeneca Agrichemicals agreed to secure rights to other patents covering golden rice and grant the inventors a license to give golden rice away to international research institutes that are working on developing new varieties of rice in places like India and the Philippines.

The genetically engineered rice will be crossed with local varieties using traditional breeding methods, and health and safety tests will be conducted.

If everything goes well, within two to three years, golden rice varieties will be made available free to farmers earning less than $10,000 a year from the crop, a figure far exceeding the average income of poor farmers.

Farmers will also be able to save seeds from their crop for future plantings because rice is a self-pollinating plant that breeds true year after year.

Dr. Potrykus held firm to those conditions through what he described as tough negotiations. But in some ways, the negotiations were made easier because the commercial potential for golden rice is expected to be limited, while the potential humanitarian benefits are great.

The inventors will earn a royalty on any profits from the niche market for health foods in places like the United States, said Dr. Adrian Dubock, who negotiated the deal on behalf of Zeneca. And the company agreed to provide Dr. Potrykus with a stipend and cover his expenses for the free distribution of the rice to researchers in developing countries. But nobody will get rich from golden rice, Dr. Dubock said.

The free distribution of golden rice seeds and genetic materials will be guided by a humanitarian advisory board consisting of the inventors, Dr. Dubock, representatives from the countries where golden rice will be grown, and Dr. Gary Tonniessen of the Rockefeller Foundation in New York, which supported the golden rice research.

Golden rice could serve as a model for arrangements to share proprietary biotechnology where it is needed most, predicted Dr. Tonniessen, who oversees grants to improve food supplies and nutrition worldwide.

The foundation is talking with international agricultural research centers, biotechnology companies and the World Bank about creating a nonprofit holding company that would make such discoveries freely available for humanitarian purposes.

"Golden rice is just one crop and one trait," Dr. Tonniessen said. "The potential to improve the nutritional content of many crops in many ways is now technically feasible."

Dr. Tonniessen said the idea for golden rice came from the field in developing nations. He once asked plant breeders at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines what they would choose if they could have genetic engineers insert any gene in rice.

The answer was a gene to make rice seeds produce the yellow pigment beta carotene, a trait they had not found in any rice variety and therefore could not propagate by traditional cross breeding. Although beta carotene has no taste, researchers are concerned that consumers in Asia might not like the yellow color because whiteness is highly valued in rice. Still, they hope people will feed it to their children.

The key to producing golden rice came from a scientific collaboration that began at a brainstorming session sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation in New York, where Dr. Potrykus met Dr. Beyer, who had figured out how beta carotene was produced in daffodils by isolating the biochemical steps that make the flower yellow.

In 1993, the two scientists' laboratories began working together to put the three essential genes from a daffodil into rice. But one of the genes did not work. Over the years, they jury-rigged a combination of genetic instructions from a daffodil, pea, bacterium and a virus to make the beta carotene molecule. They still had trouble getting the genes to work together after shooting them one at a time into rice embryos. Finally, last year a researcher in Dr. Potrykus's lab, Dr. Xudong Ye, tried using a bacterium to ferry the instructions in all at once. It worked.

From the outside, golden rice plants look just like other rice plants. It is only when the seeds are hulled and polished to remove the oily outer coating, which is usually done to protect rice from spoiling, that one can see why Dr. Potrykus calls it golden rice. The seeds glow with the yellow color of beta carotene. Golden rice is a dream come true for Dr. Potrykus, and he is noticeably relaxed among the plants in his greenhouse. "It's a very beautiful plant," he said, stroking the graceful green leaves and cascading pearly seed heads.

Dr. Potrykus, 66, has spent his entire scientific career learning how to transform rice. His ultimate goal was to redeem genetic engineering by proving that it could contribute to solving malnutrition, which he sees as the biggest problem in the world. This calling has roots in his childhood, when he was an 11-year-old refugee from eastern Germany after World War II. His father, a doctor, died in the last days of the war. He and his brothers had to beg, steal and scrounge for food.

"I have experienced myself what it means to be hungry," Dr. Potrykus said. And as long as the potential of golden rice remains locked up here in Switzerland, he remains palpably angry and frustrated.

In the past decade, genetic engineering has become controversial, as some consumers raise concerns about the potential health and environmental effects of what they call "Frankenfoods." Dr. Vandana Shiva, a prominent opponent of genetic engineering in India, has argued that golden rice is being "used as a Trojan horse to push genetically engineered crops and foods."

Golden rice has become a high- profile target partly because it is being heavily promoted by the agricultural biotechnology industry as the first genetically modified crop to benefit consumers rather than just farmers and agribusiness.

And for better or worse, Dr. Potrykus has become a symbol. He headed the largest scientific research group at Switzerland's top technical university, where he directed 64 researchers investigating ways to improve nutrients and disease resistance in basic food crops. Although he enjoyed the formal respect that accrues to "Herr Professor," the highest honorific in the German speaking university, Dr. Potrykus found himself being put on the spot in increasingly unruly public debates. At one point, he said, he feared for his safety when hundreds of students shouted him down in a lecture.

Nothing has ever happened to Dr. Potrykus or the greenhouse that he built to isolate his experiments from the environment and any foreseeable attack. But by the time he and his colleagues finally succeeded in making rice produce beta carotene last year, after a decade of setbacks, Dr. Potrykus had reached the mandatory retirement age. And Dr. Potrykus said his wife wanted nothing more than for him to "stop being engaged and start a peaceful life."

They live in a small village more than an hour's drive from Zurich, but even there his wife feels unsafe. "If the genetic engineer is in the public opinion the devil," Dr. Potrykus said, "you cannot feel happy wherever you are."

Dr. Potrykus said he would like to retire and pursue their shared passion for chasing rare bird sightings around Europe for a videotape atlas he is compiling. As long as his mission remains unfulfilled, however, bird-watching must remain a hobby.

So Dr. Potrykus continues to work from an office in his home, responding to criticisms on the Internet and finalizing plans for distributing golden rice. And although his lab has been dismantled, he has re-enrolled at the institute as a postdoctoral student so he can continue tinkering with rice.

A colleague is sharing a desk with him. And he is working with the only two members of his team remaining at the institute to try to increase the amount of iron in rice in order to combat anemia, another scourge of people who subsist on a diet of rice and little else. Anemia affects about two billion people, especially weakening children and pregnant women.

Dr. Potrykus said golden rice had received considerable attention, but he considers boosting iron in rice to be even more important. "The potential for this technology is immense," he said, "but only if it's really used and applied to practical problems."

Aussie gene put in Indian wheat to resist weed killer

November 21
Times of India

HYDERABAD - India's three highest yielding wheat varieties have been genetically modified using a gene brought from Australia to make them tolerant to herbicide, scientists have reported.

After the Indian cotton that was made pest resistant by introducing the Bacillus Thuringiensis (BT) gene from Monsanto Corporation of the US, wheat is the major crop that has been genetically modified.

The genetically altered wheat is growing under containment conditions at the Pantnagar Agricultural University.

"We report the production of herbicide tolerant transgetions plants in three high yielding Indian wheat cultivations namely CSPAN 3004, Sonalika and UP 2338," Pantnagar scientists Saliesh Gopalakrishna, Govind Garg, D.T. Singh and Nagendra Singh have said in a paper appearing in Current Science.

They said that the three altered wheat varieties have been found to be tolerant to the herbicide basta that farmers use to control Phalaris Minor (commonly known as gulli danda), the most predominant weed in the wheat fields of India.

Herbicide tolerance means that the chemical weed killer can be sprayed in wheat fields without harming the wheat plants.

The new transgenic wheat varieties can provide an attractive alternative for weed management in areas affected by Phalaris Minor, the scientists said. Quoting reports published elsewhere, they said the 'Bar' gene, (imported from Australia) and its products are 'fully biosafe'.

Pantnagar scientists created the transgenic wheat plants by bombarding wheat embryos with gold particles coated with the foreign genetic material. Although 3,195 embryos were bombarded, only eight became genetically altered - a transformation efficiency of 0.29 per cent.

After one month of growth in green house, the transgenic wheat plants were sprayed with herbicide 'Basta' at a concentration of 250 milligrams per liter and found to be tolerant.

In contrast normal wheat plants and the weed Phalaris Minor were completely killed, the scientists reported.

Monsanto says farmers still supportive of biotech crops in 2001

November 20
AgWeb.com

Responding to a Wall Street Journal article today that states Roundup Ready corn is causing a headache for Monsanto, Carl Casale, Monsanto Vice President of North American Markets, says there's growing confusion regarding the differences between StarLink and Roundup Ready corn. In addition, Casale agrees with Hugh Grant, Monsanto chief operating officer, who said in the article their own market research suggests an increasing number of biotech crop acres in 2001.

In the article, reporter Scott Kilman points out market research from A.E. Staley Manufacturing Co., which comes closer than any major grain company to suggesting farmers consider raising only conventional crops. Casale says this is not new news, noting it's basically the same position they had a year-ago.

"If you take a step back and look at the timing of this, with the combination of the StarLink controversy, you have to determine what it means. I think it's important to continue to emphasize that Roundup Ready corn has feed and food approval. It has domestic approval as well as Japanese approval, so the largest whole-grain market for U.S. exports is protected," says Casale. "It does not have full regulatory approval in Europe yet, so we take our stewardship responsibilities very seriously. We told farmers to channel it correctly. But the reality of it is that three-quarters of it was either fed on the farm or went to feedlots last year."

User satisfaction surrounding Roundup Ready corn is incredibly high, says Casale. "Early indications are that farmers who used in 2000, will use again in 2001 and will plant more acres. When you take a step back, you realize you have an obligation, when you bring new technology to the marketplace, to ensure that it's fundamentally sound scientifically and safe - as well as being able to provide secure markets for the farmers who plant that crop to sell into," says Casale. "What that doesn't mean for me, is making a blanket statement that we won't market it until we have full worldwide approval. We don't have a rational regulatory approval in place across the world, you might do that, but the fact is we don't. Europe doesn't function that way."

Casale says that Monsanto's regret is that the Europeans are still working their way through the approval process. He added he doesn't believe it's "fundamentally correct" for the Europeans to determine what American farmers plant. "I don't think it's a question of if the Europeans will approve additional biotech crops, but when… Farmers have to plant with the full knowledge that the Europeans have not accepted Roundup Ready corn. The reality is there are a lot of markets other than Europe," he said.

This is our third year where significant volume of Roundup Ready corn has been available. Up until now, it hasn't been a major issue. We believe the grain channeling programs we've had in place, as well as education program and the fact that a large portion of this grain is consumed on farm, has not created any significant issues for the marketplace.

Looking at what our own market research indicates, Casale says farmers are pretty clear about what biotechnology products are approved for European use. "That is particularly true for YieldGuard corn - that it has full worldwide approval. For farmers, it's purely an economical decision. They will make an informed decision on the farm. The only confusions come that relate StarLink to Roundup Ready corn. But Roundup Ready corn has both feed and food approval," he says. "Our company's position is that we will never introduce technology to the market that doesn't have both food and feed approval. In fact, the subsequent thing that we've done to StarLink, is that we've looked at our own programs and said the other thing we will never do is introduce new technology that doesn't have Japanese approval as well because it's the largest export market for the U.S."

"Agriculture is who we are and what we do for a living. We're in this thing for the long haul and we're going to continue to move ahead. We continue to invest in technology and one of the reasons why is because producers absolutely love it," Casale said.

New Zealand Dairy Board: High costs of ignoring GMO opportunities

November 20
Dow Jones

"If the dairy industry is prevented from utilizing the opportunities bioscience offers, it will lose its crucial efficiency advantage in low-cost production," Dairy Board chief executive Warren Larsen told the Royal Commission on Genetic Modification.

Presenting the board's submission to the commission, Larsen said that when other dairy producers begin to introduce genetically modified technologies, the New Zealand dairy industry's traditional efficiency advantage would quickly be under threat of erosion.

Larsen said the dairy industry is keen about the potential of bioscience to improve forage crops and to enable the more rapid identification of superior animals for breeding. The new technologies also offer the potential to reduce fertilizer and pesticide usage, reduce methane emissions and develop milk products to enhance human well being, he said.

The Royal Commission on Genetic Modification was established by the government and is hearing submissions from interested parties on the new technologies.

Science matters

In rice, as life, diversity yields vitality

November 19
Environmental News Network column by David Suzuki

But as the world population expands, especially the developing world, the need for more rice grows too. In fact, in the next 10 years, a burgeoning Asian population is expected to increase demand for rice by 35 percent. That's a big jump for a crop that already occupies hundreds of millions of acres worldwide.

Also troubling are studies indicating that our changing climate could reduce rice yields. Although increased carbon dioxide levels may actually increase rice growth, increased temperatures can greatly reduce yields.

Higher temperatures could prove especially problematic in dry areas. Already, 40 percent of rice lands in Asia do not receive enough rain to produce a maximum crop.

Many biotechnology companies are working on ways to increase rice yields using genetic modification. Rice has one of the smallest genomes of the major food crops, and it will be the first to have a complete sequence of its DNA. Understanding which genes perform what functions could help researchers find ways to make plants more productive.

If researchers are able to modify the regulation of specific rice genes, they could, for example, advance the flowering time of rice plants, which means the plants would mature more quickly and thus increase farmer's yields by allowing more crops in a season. Modifying genes in rice plants could also potentially produce shorter plants with more rice or make the plants resistant to diseases.

As with any genetic technology, experimentation is very expensive and any changes to the rice genome would have to be made with caution.

But there may be another way to help increase rice yields that doesn't involve genetic manipulation. A recent landmark study across thousands of farms in China found that farmers can greatly inhibit the most significant rice disease and increase yields by simply planting a more diverse crop.

In conventional farming, a single variety of crop plant is grown by itself in large tracts, a method known as monoculture. Monoculture farming is convenient because it simplifies planting and harvesting and makes sorting and marketing easier. But because all the plants are identical, the crop is especially susceptible to disease and pests.

The conventional answer to these problems has been to apply large quantities of pesticide and fungicide. But these chemicals are toxic and diseases can quickly adapt by becoming resistant to them.

Rice researcher Youyong Zhu and other Chinese scientists tried a different approach: convincing farmers to plant several different varieties of rice together in fields across China. By planting mixtures, the farmers created physical barriers preventing the spread of disease. It also increased the diversity of plant pathogens (disease-causing organisms), which increases competition among pathogens and slows their ability to adapt to plant defenses.

The results were impressive. The main disease of rice, rice blast, was dramatically reduced. And in all cases, the mixed populations created more total grain per hectare than monocultures. The experiment was so successful that after two years farmers were able to eliminate their use of fungicides entirely.

Raising rice yields will become an increasingly important concern for many developing countries in the coming years. As Zhu's research shows, there may be ways to improve yields that also reduce the use of toxic chemicals and do not require costly and uncertain genetic manipulation.

Similar large-scale studies are needed with other food crops to see if stepping away from monoculture and planting mixtures of both varieties and species could have similar benefits.